I [the author] am writing about visual literacy and visual texts, and in doing so, I will share with you examples of children’s ‘picturebooks’ where alphabetic print is no longer the primary carrier of meaning and where images and print often are symbiotic.
This study provided a guide for appropriate characteristics of Instructional Photo to be used by teachers, trainers, coaches, instructors, and anyone else who desires to deliver knowledge and present content with visual meaning to elementary students in the state of Kuwait as a teaching style that supports teachers, facilitates clarification, and gets the learners’ attention and motivates them.
The purpose of this paper is to understand young children’s knowledge of visual literacy elements as well as their ability to comprehend newly introduced visual literacy concepts. The study also examined existing support for visual literacy programs from parents and educators. The study explored the knowledge of basic visual literacy elements of young children enrolled in two private schools in the New York City metropolitan area.
This study proposes a basic learning program for enhancing visual literacy using an original Web content management system (Web CMS) to share students’ outcomes in class as a blog post. It seeks to reinforce students’ understanding and awareness of the design of visual content. The learning program described in this research focuses on to address how to create meanings of visual content that is important to express information visually, and includes three exercises based on perception, visual variables, and signification. The Web CMS to publish student works and share in class helps enhance students’ reflection. We also developed a rubric as an assessment device for students’ outcomes. The content of the learning program and its implementation are described with the support of observational data.
Visual literacy is a critical skill that enables individuals to navigate the world of visual media. While research shows multiple benefits of introducing visual literacy early in life, there is a scarcity of visual literacy programs for young children. In an effort to advance development of visual literacy programs for children, we explored techniques for engaging young children in visual literacy instruction using artworks. Our paper reports preliminary study findings and recommendations and outlines directions for future work.
Word clouds, created by a variety of web applications, are enticing new tools for some social studies educators. Teachers should be prepared, though, for the possibility that our zeal for a new resource may prevent us from adequately examining its value. This article recounts a class activity involving the creation of a word cloud, the Wordles of major documents from the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, analyzes the lesson’s strengths and weaknesses, and offers guidance for the meaningful use of word cloud applications in the classroom.
The abundance and complexity of information now being delivered visually demands that we become visually literate, as well as verbally literate. We need to understand better a process we have taken for granted. In an age increasingly dominated by images – a media culture, it becomes imperative to develop an understanding of how our visual processing system works; how visual cognition is shaped by social, political, and cultural conditioning; and how visual messages are created to elicit specific responses. One of the chief goals of visual literacy education is to encourage critical analysis of visual communication by developing tools that help us understand and manage this complex activity. “Seeing” needs to become an actively conscious, not a passive activity for us. This thesis illustrates the importance of critical visual literacy, provides an historical overview of the visual literacy movement, and suggests a foundational approach to teaching the basics of visual literacy.
An abridgment of the dissertation Measuring Visual Literacy Ability in Graduate Level Pre-Service Teachers by Teresa A. Farrell, this quantitative descriptive study was designed to establish a baseline of VL ability within this population using a national pool of graduate level students enrolled in teacher preparation programs. Avgerinou’s (2007) VL Index (modified to an online format) was the instrument used to measure VL ability. Results of this study indicate there may be a need for purposeful VL instruction in teacher preparation programs to better equip teachers in K-12 to be visually literate.
Today, the concept of “Literacy” represents reading and writing in various forms of texts which embody knowledge and a range of skills. Different literacies are essential for human to live, work and produce in the society. In order to use communication technologies in educational and teaching processes appropriately, individuals are not only required to become scientifically and technologically literate but also multimedia literate. Within this respect, a Project called “The 21st Century Literacies Education for Teacher Candidates” was conducted with the support of TUBITAK at Amasya University.
The intention that motivates an online image’s creation might be ignored by overwhelmed media consumers as images wash over them as they scroll through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. Consumers of commercially and personally produced images tend to focus on how those images make them feel as opposed to the narrative or reportorial information embedded in images. Since both “experts” and “novices” create online images, discerning an imagemaker’s level of expertise is difficult, if not impossible, to grasp due to lack of attribution, the availability of sophisticated online photo editing tools, and a steep learning curve among many novice creators. To discourage merely skimming images and to develop greater visual literacy, five principles of visual composition can be applied to access and analyze the intended and unintended denotative and connotative messages embedded in personal or commercial images posted on various social media platforms.
Although the paradigm of visual literacy (VL) is rapidly emerging, the construct itself still lacks operational specificity. Based on a semiotic understanding of visual culture as an ongoing process of ‘making meaning’, we present in this study a skill-based classification of VL, differentiating four sets of VL skills: perception; imagination and creation; conceptualization; analysis. A qualitative curriculum analysis based on this framework revealed that curriculum standards for compulsory education in Belgium refer only peripherally to the use of visuals. The attention for VL skills also decreases from secondary education on, especially curriculum standards related to the analysis of images are scarce.
In today’s K-12 educational environment with the newly adopted Common Core State Standards (CCSS), improving student literacy as a foundational skill to obtain success in all other subject areas is one of the most important goals. Unfortunately, many literature curricula suffer from a lack of innovative pedagogy despite the introduction of various educational technologies meant to aid student learning. This study focused on developing a new game-based constructionist pedagogical model for literature education using tabletop role-playing game creation. Using Shulman’s (1987) Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) that eventually evolved into Mishra and Kohler’s (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) as the main theoretical framework, this design-based research showed how tabletop role-playing game creation as a constructionist pedagogical strategy successfully helped high school students to receive the benefits of high quality literature education.
With evidence that arts engagement and nonlinear thinking style both utilize insight, intuition, and emotion in the decision making process, the literature has driven an investigation of the relationship between levels of arts engagement and thinking style preference. This nonexperimental correlational study (N = 101) explored (a) the prevalence of linear, nonlinear, or balanced linear/nonlinear thinking style of professionals working in museums. (b) Whether thinking style has a relationship with (i) age; (ii) sex; (iii) academic major; (iv) occupation; (v) levels of arts engagement. Two theoretical frameworks underpinned this study: (a) new literacies and (b) cognitive styles.
This paper provides an overview of how to reach the millennial generation, primarily at the higher education level. However, it does address an audience of K12 teachers, higher education faculty, researchers, administrators, and practitioners, who not only teach the higher education population of students, but who prepare students who will one day attain a postsecondary education. Currently used practices that have been grounded in theory are presented along with evidence of curricular integration of visual and media literacy skills. The skills are in alignment with the standards of the Association of Colleges and Research Libraries (ACRL), the definition of visual literacy from the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), and the definition of media literacy from the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).
The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education presents guidelines for educators and provides a scientific framework in which students can acquire visual literacy skills and use visual media in a critical way throughout their professional career. The Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education was composed by the American Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). By means of these standards, the members of the association identified the domains of visual literacy and specified what learning outcomes could enable students to acquire visual literacy skills. The present paper is a discussion of the extent to which the Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education can be met.
The article reports on the adoption of standards for competency in visual literacy by the American Association of College and Research Libraries in 2012 to prepare students in higher education and career guidance. Topics discussed include the analysis and communication of messages, coordination of elements for personal expression and training of students in the examination of images. Also mentioned is the access to the National Archives Tool Box for Primary Sources.
In the paper the author describes the cultural and technological context of the visual literacy, coming from the specifics of the developing image culture and shaping of the information society. It shows the results of the pilot research on the Polish students in the scope of specific visual competences. The reference material for the research tasks prepared for‘”The legitimacy of visual literacy in the process of education” project was the visual literacy set (Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, Chicago 2011) developed in academic and educational environments in the USA (The Association of College and Research Libraries, ACRL).
The aim of this study is to develop a scale determining the visual literacy levels of university students. After reviewing the relevant literature a 75 item draft scale was prepared. The scale was applied to 3rd and 4th year students of Education Faculty of Amasya University. Non-functional items have been excluded from the scale as a result of the factor analysis and 41 items have been included. It has been determined that the statements in the scale are gathered in 7 dimensions. These dimensions consisted of: “Identification of the need for visual”, “Finding and accessing visual sources”, “Analyzing and interpreting the visuals”, “Evaluation of visuals and visual sources”, “Effective usage of visuals and visual media”, “Designing and creating visuals” and “Taking ethical and legal issues into consideration”.
“This study seeks insight into the use of visual aids in contemporary post-compulsory teaching. This thesis comprises a two-part study and employs a mixed methods approach. The first part inquires into teachers’ and lecturers’ practice with regard to their visual aids, and the second compares the effectiveness of text, images and imagery displayed in support of a lecture.The findings of the thesis are combined to propose a principle of Visual Working Memory Utilisation (VWMU), upon which future research into visual aid design and use in post compulsory education might be based.”
“This descriptive study is preliminary study to investigate the measurement of VL ability across the United States in order to establish a baseline VL ability measure from which to make vital decisions in the purposeful training of visual literacy within teacher preparatory programs and professional development within school districts. This study describes the mean performance levels of 125 participants collected from a randomly stratified national population within five of the six regional accrediting agencies for public higher education. The measures of central tendency and variance for the individual skills within the Avgerinou (2001) VL Index indicate a need for growth, in particular, in the intellectual skills of concrete concepts, defined concepts, and higher order rules. The implications of these findings emphasize the need for more development in critical engagement with visuals especially as it applies to Common Core State Standards assessments, consumer-driven marketing and power roles, and new modes of digital authorship in a media-saturated society.”